Frittata is a dish great for mopping up those bothersome odds and ends that tend to reside in one’s fridge or pantry. Anything from leftovers to stray fungi, brassicas and lonely chunks of meat can be slung frivolously into frittata to great effect. After all, eggs and cheese go well with many types of food, such is their versatility. Eggs, in particular, have the impressive ability to be at once both happily innocuous and utterly delicious. All things considered, frittata makes a mightily frugal meal capable of transforming all manner of potential waste into something rather special.

Around a week ago a friend from work asked if I’d like a bunch of his surplus radishes. As you will understand, it would have been impossible for someone as frugal as I to refuse such a generous offer, so I candidly accepted, despite not being the most avid fan of radishes. Upon opening the bag left for me in the fridge, I found myself rather impressed by the colour of the brassicas you see before you, having only previously used the shop-bought, perfectly spherical, uniformly red variety. The taste of the vegetables was also far better than I had expected and would clearly be well-matched with something sweet; hence the apple.

Since it’s coming to the end of the rhubarb season, I thought it best to give you lot a couple of recipes which include this fabulous vegetable. However, I’ve not always considered it fabulous; in my younger days it was looked upon, by me, as a most contemptible ingredient. To be fair, it is easy to see why, since rhubarb does have an inherently bitter component to its flavour; which is why it’s always cooked with sugar. Luckily, as I’ve grown older my tastes have come to love the tang which accompanies fresh, seasonal rhubarb. The less said about forced rhubarb, the better.

Fear not, it is perfectly clear to me that Mexican food isn’t composed entirely of a long string of dips and side dishes, such as guacamole and refried beans. Indeed, how strange it would be to have a nation of perennial nibblers living among us. So, safe in the knowledge that there exists, on this planet, no colony of human sized rodents in possession of an immoral number of carrot sticks, I embarked upon the first “proper” dish of the ‘Frugal Does Mexican’ series.

One of the main advantages that accompany a cast-iron pan is its innate ability to be tossed willy-nilly into an oven without incurring considerable damage. Without such an implement one has to, when making a frittata or something similar, go through an occasionally embarrassing egg-flipping process. As such, it is clear that once one has received such a useful gift one is obliged to put it through its frittata-making paces. This must seem like incredibly old, and thus ironic, news to the skillet veterans out there. However, for a novice, such as me, it is proving emotionally difficult to come to terms with how rapidly such an item can become entirely indispensable.